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The U.K. just made a big investment in nuclear energy, giving Rolls-Royce nearly $300 million to develop a fleet of small modular reactors (SMRs).

“This is a once in a lifetime opportunity for the U.K. to deploy more low-carbon energy than ever before and ensure greater energy independence,” Kwasi Kwarteng, the U.K.’s business and energy secretary, said of the deal.

No, the ‘future of clean energy’ is fusion. But these would help get us there.

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When asked if Bluetooth is holding back Apple’s hardware and “stifling sound quality,” Geaves declined to say too much, but he said that Apple “concentrates very hard” on getting the most out of Bluetooth, and that “it’s fair to say” that Apple would “like more bandwidth.”

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Don’t ever say that we don’t have useful stuff here.

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Nuclear power is going mini. Former SpaceX engineers are creating a portable microreactor that is lightweight and cost-effective, calling it the “world’s first portable, zero-emissions power source.”

It was originally a project imagined for Mars, but the team decided Earth needed it more (or, at least, sooner). So, they formed a company called Radiant to continue to develop the microreactor. Once ready, it could provide instant power to hard-to-reach places and quick installation in populated areas.

I’d buy one.

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Hammer tech.

UPDATE: Tesla: Nothing Says Customer Satisfaction Like 30Kg of Dynamite

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For around a decade, scientists researching Parkinson’s disease have been probing a pathway involved in the way brain cells process energy, and now a mystery around the role of a particular protein has been solved. The team has produced an unprecedented “live action” view that shows how this protein is activated, providing researchers with a blueprint for therapies that help prevent cell death associated with the condition.

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Suck on it, TSA!

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Red-necked falconry. Who could ask for anything more?

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To combat desertification – a worldwide problem caused by, among other things, over-farming, mining, and climate change – Mazyar Etehadi from the Dubai Institute of Design and Innovation has proposed a small autonomous robot that is intended to live full-time in the desert planting trees.

A graduation project from Mazyar Etehadi, the “A’seedbot” is a small autonomous robot that inhabits the desert to cultivate its landscape.

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This appears to be a great idea in VTOL aircraft. I wish them good fortune.

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Only works for pigs so far, but still.

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It’s an old joke in defense circles that laser weapons are the technology of the future, and always will be. But for Pentagon planners, the dream of directed energy capabilities does, finally, seem to be transitioning to reality. In a new analysis, however, Joe Shepherd, vice president of directed energy innovation at Booz Allen Hamilton, argues that the department may be putting its money into the wrong area of study for this crucial capability.

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Most people probably don’t know how to use secret codes on iPhone. In fact, most people probably don’t even know that the iPhone has secret codes. But it does — and we’ve tried them.

Although most of the iPhone’s features are tucked away within apps, widgets and the Control Center, there’s a whole heap of hidden treasure waiting to be uncovered via the dialer.

I had no idea these even existed.

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Of course the food in question – ‘pasta bowls’ – is easily automated. I suspect that most Chinese dishes would be equally easy to automate. Interesting, but not necessarily significant.

When robots can do a sirloin with baked potato and clam chowder, call me.

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In their paper, the researchers explained that most solar cells are currently silicon-based, which means that their efficiency is limited. This is what prompted them to examine the properties of barium titanate, a mixed oxide made of barium and titanium.

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A great idea – if it works.

I see it going slowly. Can it go fast? How fast? Can it go fast safely?  I will not ride in one of these until it’s been on the road in general use for at least five years with no accidents.

No private ownership, but just transportation service? Ooooookayyyyy…. I keep my car clean. The cab driver keeps his cab clean. Who keeps the Zoox clean? Who cleans up after the drunk who barfs all over the inside? Who protects female passengers from the carjacker and the rapist?

There’s many a slip ‘tween the cup and the lip….

Take whatever action you deem appropriate.

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At Dimensional Energy, the method involves a reactor that houses a proprietary nanocatalyst material that effectively replaces the plant components that facilitate natural photosynthesis. Inside the reactor, the nanocatalyst and CO2 are exposed to sunlight and water, allowing the CO2 and water to break apart and reform into organic compounds called hydrocarbons, which can be used to make jet fuel.

The 60-day trial was a success, demonstrating not only that the technology works, but also that it could soon be cost competitive with traditional fuels.

We’ll find out.

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Florida Governor Ron DeSantis introduced legislation Wednesday in an effort to crack down on the teaching of Critical Race Theory and other ‘woke’ ideology in schools and places of employment, urging that his state will not tolerate the “elite-driven phenomenon.” of “cultural Marxism”.

I wasn’t aware that governors could introduce legislation – or do they mean he had an ally in the legislature do it?

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The two companies announced jointly a “breakthrough in semiconductor design utilizing a new vertical transistor architecture that demonstrates a path to scaling beyond nanosheet, and has the potential to reduce energy usage by 85 percent compared to a scaled fin field-effect transistor”.

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Becoming an astronaut requires perfect 20/20 vision, but unfortunately, the effects of space can cause astronauts to return to Earth with degraded eyesight. Now, researchers from UT Southwestern Medical Center have developed a sleeping bag that that could prevent or reduce those problems by effectively sucking fluid out of astronauts’ heads.

TMI.

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The development of drugs to treat cognitive problems in patients with mental illness may be a step closer after a team of researchers discovered that an existing drug – used to treat constipation – may be able to boost our ability to think more clearly.

Severe psychiatric disorders can have a devastating impact on a patient’s life. Cognitive impairments – ranging from decreased attention and working memory to disrupted social cognition and language – are widespread in psychiatric disorders such as major depression, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder. These common problems are poorly treated with current medications and often have a large impact on people’s lives, and so scientists are searching for ways of improving or restoring these functions.

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Besides being important to food, starch also has many other uses, playing a role in papermaking, drug manufacturing, and more.

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The drops, known as pilocarpine, and sold by pharma outlet Allergan under the name “Vuity,” might help the 128 million people in the United States who are nearsighted.

One drop in each eye, according to the business, may enhance closeup eyesight for six to ten hours, according to CBS News.

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Here’s looking at you,  kid.

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Can you imagine sound travels in the same way as light does? A research team at City University of Hong Kong (CityU) discovered a new type of sound wave: the airborne sound wave vibrates transversely and carries both spin and orbital angular momentum like light does. The findings shattered scientists’ previous beliefs about the sound wave, opening an avenue to the development of novel applications in acoustic communications, acoustic sensing, and imaging.

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The race to create the weirdest flying taxi seems to never end.

Now, developers from a South African startup Phractyl have unveiled a hybrid bird-plane with its concept “Macrobat,” which is unlike anything that the industry had created before. With tracked feet, bird legs, a tilting cabin, and tilting wings, the aircraft promises a ‘near-vertical takeoff and landing (NVTOL),” even from unprepared terrains.

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The technology behind cyclotech’s cyclo-rotors is a mechanism that was patented almost 100 years ago, although never before used for an aircraft. wing blades are integrated inside a spinning cylindrical tube to form each propeller. the angle of the blades can be changed during flight to enable rapid redirection. in comparison, other eVTOLs need time to transition from vertical to normal flight mode for take-off and landing.

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“This project is a game changer for Habitat for Humanity,” said Janet V. Green, CEO of Habitat for Humanity Peninsula and Greater Williamsburg. “We’re selling an affordable home to a family four days before Christmas, and at the same time, we’re finding solutions to build more efficient homes.”

The three-bedroom house will feature 1,200 square feet of living space, as well as two full baths.

In order to complete the project, Habitat for Humanity Peninsula and Greater Williamsburg partnered with Alquist and broke ground in July. Alquist used concrete in place of lumber to 3D print the walls, saving an estimated 15% per square foot in building costs.

More than half of high-impact cancer lab studies could not be replicated

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A breakthrough study by University of Alberta researchers has shown the fat cells that lie just beneath our skin shrink when exposed to the blue light emitted by the sun.

“When the sun’s blue light wavelengths-the light we can see with our eye-penetrate our skin and reach the fat cells just beneath, lipid droplets reduce in size and are released out of the cell. In other words, our cells don’t store as much fat,” said Peter Light, senior author of the study, who is a professor of pharmacology and the director of the U of A’s Alberta Diabetes Institute.

“If you flip our findings around, the insufficient sunlight exposure we get eight months of the year living in a northern climate may be promoting fat storage and contributing to the typical weight gain some of us have over winter,” added the Dr. Charles A. Allard Chair in Diabetes Research.

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A bionic eye that could help visually impaired people see again is ready for clinical trials — and if it works as hoped, it might one day give us superhuman sight.

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One of the examples that I use to show how much we’ve learned about biology (and how much we didn’t know, even in the relatively recent past) is RNA. Who could have predicted that there would turn out to be so many different kinds of the stuff? We all grew up hearing about the basics in school – messenger RNA, transfer RNA, ribosomal RNA if your introductory course got fancy. But short hairpin RNA? Double-stranded RNA? Long noncoding RNA? Circular RNA? MicroRNA? I know that I’m leaving some out, but I’m also sure that there are others that belong on that list that we haven’t even stumbled across yet. Either we don’t know where to look, or how to look (because our existing techniques might not pick them up), or we don’t understand what we’re looking at even if we come across them. And I don’t mean to give the idea that the classes above are all figured out, either. We’re just starting to get the first ideas about what some of these things do in the cell, and how they relate to health and disease. Scientists of 2060 or so will look back on us with some pity, because of all the important things that we just didn’t know yet back in the 2020s.

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But the chances of the Eco-Nazis and their pet Woke politicians letting you do so is negligible.

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Scientists are examining long-ignored extrachromosomal DNA to understand how cancer evolves resistance to drugs. Can the clues help us outfox cancer itself?

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Someone or multiple people are blasting “antiwork” manifestos to receipt printers at businesses around the world, according to people who claim to have seen the printed manifesto, dozens of posts on Reddit, and a cybersecurity company that is analyzing network traffic to insecure printers.

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I’ll bet you didn’t know that.

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Just in case you were wondering. I know I was.

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An Instacart 15-minute delivery service is planned to launch early next year, in a significant advance on the company’s current two-hour delivery time (with a 30-minute service available in some cities)

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China has finished construction on an experimental thorium reactor that could greatly expand the number of people who can benefit from clean nuclear energy.

Fission basics: Nuclear power plants split atoms of fuel through a process called “fission.” This produces energy that can then be converted into electricity.

Nuclear power is more reliable than wind and solar, and the fission process doesn’t produce any climate-harming carbon emissions, making nuclear energy a potentially key weapon in the battle against climate change.

The challenge: Today, there are more than 400 nuclear power plants in operation across the globe, and the vast majority use uranium as a fuel and water to cool and moderate the fission process — but there are downsides to the status quo.

While uranium is about as common as tin, less than 1% of mined uranium is a specific kind that can undergo fission (uranium-235) — a process called “enrichment” is needed to increase uranium-235 levels in the mined metal, and it’s both complicated and expensive.??

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Groundbreaking research from Australian scientists has revealed a likely cause of Alzheimer’s disease, the devastating condition that affects 5.8 million Americans. Using mouse models, the researchers built upon previous knowledge of beta-amyloid protein, already known to play a role in Alzheimer’s. They discovered how this toxic protein leaks through the blood-brain barrier to causes degenerative damage to brain cells.

According to Medical News Today, the findings have been called a “breakthrough,” and could lead to preventive strategies to delay the onset of Alzheimer’s disease or slow its progression.

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Follow the science! Until it changes … as it ALWAYS does.

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Overflow lots set up by large retailers this month as temporary staging areas for imported containers have helped bring down congestion levels at the Port of Savannah, and Georgia officials expect further efficiency gains with this week’s opening of two more port-sponsored pop-up sites.

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That seems unduly optimistic.

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Somebody ought to point out to him that thereby he will automatically become a racist and a white supremacist. If he doesn’t take care, he may wake up one morning having voted for Trump.

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And there’s not a woman in the world who will ever wear it.

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I’ll bet you didn’t know that there was a Canadian Maple Syrup Cartel. Sounds ominous, no?

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I find this mildly disturbing.

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Footprints found at White Sands National Park in New Mexico provide the earliest unequivocal evidence of human activity in the Americas and provide insight into life over 23,000 years ago, scientists report.

I guess the so-called First Nations are just immigrants like the rest of us.